The Obama administration will, as expected, comply with Judge Edward Korman’s order to allow all underage girls, and their rapists to purchase Plan B without restrictions.
The latest news incorrectly states that “If a girl or woman already is pregnant, the pill, which prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg, has no effect.”
Doctors warn against ’reproductive coercion’ – The Washington Post.
Of considerable amusement is the placement of an article on reproductive coercion (which does not mention faith or religion) under the “On Faith” heading. Perhaps the WaPo editors could explain that.
The article goes on to explain the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists big concern that men might be coercing women to get pregnant by refusing to use condoms, inducing condom failure, or tugging out the IUD. It goes on to suggest means by which this can be thwarted, including having a stash of the not very effective morning after pills.
Would the ACOG like to include itself under this warning about reproductive coercion? ACOG and affiliates have been marketing pills and other birth control modalities to women, thereby eliciting massive changes in behavioral trends. Of extreme importance is the fact that the birth control methods which women are encouraged to rely on, are not nearly as effective in actual use as they are claimed to be in “perfect use”. This has lead to millions of unplanned pregnancies, and millions of abortions.
Reproductive coercion has been the result as the ACOG seemingly fails to acknowledge that a natural consequence of the kind of sex which makes babies is …….. BABIES!!!
It would be encouraging to see the ACOG and so-called women’s advocacy groups show a bit more interest in reducing sex slavery, sexual abuse of minors, coercion and incest, even though that might reduce the need for their services. Those golden handcuffs seem to be an impediment.
Proposal to amend ObamaCare contraceptive rule met with skepticism | Fox News.
Kathleen (Cruella) Sebelius, has slightly broadened conscience exceptions in the HHS mandate. The new amendment still shows her desire to remove all of those who religiously object to paying for birth control, abortion and sterilizations, from the world of business. This is much worse than a status of dhimmitude for strict opponents of abortion, and would serve to force them out of the taxable portion of the U.S. economy. With this amendment, the administration shows that it is not serious about addressing the debt problem by allowing the INFLUX of tax dollars.
The HHS mandate remains a significant part of the many pronged effort by the Obama administration to remove the United States from its position as a world economic leader.
John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent, expresses his sadness (above) that Weld County is not providing the morning after pills to its family planning clinics.
The crux of the issue is that the social conservative politicians in Weld County don’t want to spend tax dollars on relatively ineffective birth control drugs, which can often operate through abortive mechanisms.
Tomasic and his ‘expert’ interviewee, Judith Schlay seemed disturbed that the politicians would have learned the multiple mechanisms of morning after pills via the internet. Tomasic says – go to the New York Times for your medical info, as he does. Old-timer Schlay says- go to the university library, etc.
Pharmer says that Pubmed is on the internet, and so is the information provided by the drug manufacturers to their regulatory boards. Schlay needs to update herself on the myriad sources of medical information. She might increase her depth of knowledge on the pharmacology of levonorgestrel and ulipristal acetate.
One thing we know for certain- It’s a giant, tax payer funded cash cow to be pounding expensive morning after pills into women, mostly during times when they couldn’t get pregnant even without the pill. More abortions can be sold if women come to rely on these birth control methods which demonstrate less than 60% reduction in pregnancy rate, in actual use. It’s not hard to find ‘reproductive health care experts’ who want to line their pockets with tax money.
Supreme Court Justice Refuses to Block Obama Morning After Pill Edict.
Obama’s appointee, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor refused to grant an emergency ruling blocking the effects of Obama’s HHS mandate on Hobby Lobby and it’s sister company, Mardel Inc.
She stated that while the legal requirements for an emergency ruling were not met, the companies may continue to pursue their lawsuits in the lower courts.
Attorneys for the government incorrectly deny the fact that the birth control drugs have abortive mechanisms of action. The government continues to pursue its interest in regulating the populations of its constituency by unethical and deceptive means.
Quite a significant number of pharmacists prefer to sell the morning after pills only to the actual patient. If you search the net, you’ll find a fair number of stories detailing this phenomenon.
Apparently a recent story has made the news and has a bit of buzz on the blogs. Seems that “Hilary and Jon” had a desire for the morning after pill. They’re not yet married, and apparently not ready to have a baby. Jon was surprised to encounter a female pharmacist who would not sell the drug to him.
Some people have no idea why a pharmacist, who is willing to sell those pills, would make that decision. The girls at Reality Check seem to fall into this group. So Pharmer made an attempt to explain this to them, and added a bit of extra bonus information.
1) Many formerly over the counter remedies have been placed in restricted access due to abuse. All cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine are now behind the pharmacist’s counter, and sales are restricted, because people like to use that chemical to produce methamphetamine.
2) The morning after pills are sometimes abused by males, who give them to females without their consent, sometimes as a chaser to “date rape” drugs. Because of this, it makes sense to restrict the sale of the morning after pills to men. Congratulations to the pharmacist who had enough sense to understand this, and take a stand to protect women.
3) It is misbranding to refer to a drug as “contraception” if it does not significantly stop or delay ovulation during or after the luteal peak (during the most fertile time of the month). Part of its action is due to mechanisms operating after fertilization. The morning after pills are properly classed as “hormonal birth control”, not “contraception”.
4) The morning after pills have shown MUCH less effectiveness than was initially claimed. It makes NO sense for a woman to change sexual behavior due to reliance on the morning after pills. They reduce pregnancy rates by about 60 percent, or LESS.
5) In general, the effect of marketing ulipristal acetate, and levonorgestrel as morning-after-pills will be to stem the decline of the abortion rate. The spectre of increasingly abysmal medical care, overlaid by ever increasing drug shortages has possibly killed the mood for a lot of women, leading to a dip in abortion demand in the U.S. Heavily marketing a poorer quality birth control option might be enough to keep the abortion businesses alive. Levonorgestrel MAP was strongly associated with that effect in Anna Glasier’s Scottish studies.
Pharmer finds the morning after pills to be problematic on a number of levels, ranging from ethics to efficacy, and doesn’t dispense them at all.
Priceless results are produced when O-Bot attendees of the Obama/FLuke campaign stop are asked if the government should stay out of your bedroom. YES! Of course. Then when they are asked why the government should pay for what goes on in the bedroom… Duuuuuuuhhhhhh.
RU—Serious? Jennie McCormack, the Next “Roe”? Good Grief | LifeNews.com.
Jennie McCormack aborted her 5 month unborn baby using mifepristone and misoprostil which she purchased online.
She was charged for illegally obtaining those drugs, doing a home abortion, and violating the ban on abortions after 20 weeks. She is appealing her convictions with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The FDA approved Ella for use as a morning after pill in an effort to provide another avenue for procurement of drugs for home abortions. Ella, ulipristal acetate, is a chemical analog of RU-456, mifepristone, and, in sufficient doses, operates by the same mechanism. Ella can be obtained from an online pharmacy in Utah, and doing so would circumvent one of the laws which McCormack has broken in her home state of Idaho.
Morning-after pills can be bought OTC.
South Korea used to sell most forms of birth control over the counter, with the morning after pills being prescription only. They have reversed this trend, putting nine of eleven brands of morning after pill over the counter. Note: the articles in English do not specify if prescription status of Ulipristal acetate is affected in this change.
The KDFA justification for changing daily administered birth control pill brands to prescription status is due to their side effects, which were listed at the Korea Herald as: thrombosis, thromboembolism, thrombo puerperalis, myocardial infarction, cerebral hemorrhage and cerebral thrombosis among others. The pills are banned from being administered to women with breast cancer, endometrial cancer, hepatitis and thromboembolism. Their use is also restricted among women who are over 40 years old, obese, have headaches, depression or other related conditions.
The Korean association of OB-Gyns is not in favor of putting morning after pills over the counter, citing studies that show that their availability does not reduce abortion demand.
The Catholic Diocese of Cheongju has registered opposition, stating that they will call for KFDA head Lee Hee-sung to resign.
In the above linked report, as with most news articles in countries where abortion has become controversial, there is the unsupported claim that the BC works only by affecting ovulation.
In opposition to this, the Drinks Business Review reports:
“KFDA officer Cho Ki-ho said according to their panel of experts, the main mechanism behind the emergency pills is the interference of hormonal action, linked to interference of implantation.”
“”We are hoping that the wider access to the morning-after pill will prevent unwanted pregnancies. Because the drug is effective within 12 hours from sexual intercourse and at utmost 72 hours, time and access to the drug is very important. The pill is not an ordinary contraceptive. It is for very limited, urgent and frightening situations only,” Cho said.”
“It is my certain conviction that no man loses his freedom except through his own weakness.”
“Contraceptives are an insult to woman hood. The difference between a prostitute and a woman using contraceptives is only this that the former sells her body to several men, the latter sells it to one man. Man has no right to touch his wife so long as she does not wish to have a child, and the woman should have the will-power to resist even her own husband.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi (H, 5-5-1946, p. 118)
Ms. Fluke, Mahatma Gandhi had a lot to say on birth control. Certainly he would have had the left-gurls’ panties in a wad, and if he had been on talk radio, your side would have been going after his advertisers.
via Obama Birth Control Compromise Defuses Religion Issue – The Daily Beast.
Above linked is an address in favor of Obama’s new shell game “solution” to the fight with the religious people of the United States.
It’s just as bogus and unsustainable as the rest of Obamacare. Instead of forcing the religious institutions to pay for birth control, abortive drugs and sterilizations, he moves the cost to the insurers, which in turn move the cost back to the employers. The only change is that the employers do not have to speak to their employees about birth control. Obama is still making businesses sell specific products, and making the citizens pay for those products. UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
Pharmer is laughing at Dana Goldstein, of the Daily Beast, who think’s its not rational that a woman’s boss has influence over her sex life. She does think it’s more rational that the influence be transferred to the Government.
There are two to three generations of lefties completely convinced that there is a right for humans to have sex, and that someone else should have to fund the activity and the results: erectile dysfunction meds, birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, child birth, abortions, etc. I think that human rights end where another human begins. Sex involves two people at least, and can make more.
From the Pharmer comes a more libertarian viewpoint. Why can’t people assume more responsibility for their own behaviors and consequences?? The total cost of health care would go down if people knew that they had to take care of their own sex life and its results.
Third party payment is what has made the cost of health care (and education too) skyrocket, with no return on the extra investment. People are almost never good stewards of other people’s money.
Consider this novel idea… people delay sex until they can foot the bills. Birth control should be paid for in cash, and the same for sex enhancers and drugs for erectile dysfunction. People can enter their choice of insurance pools for to soften the expenses for complications of reproduction. That can be handled in a way similar to dental or life insurance. The cost of reproductive health care would plummet.
Certainly this would not appeal to the lefties who are used to trading in all their other freedoms in order to have sex with people they don’t even like, (or with children).
Maybe those who are interested in freedom and self determination should give the idea of personal responsibility another look.
Obama to Announce Contraception Rule ‘Accommodation’ for Religious Organizations – ABC News.
Obama is in hotter water than he thought he’d be in, trying to force religiously affiliated organizations to pay for birth control, abortive drugs and sterilizations.
He’s got a compromise plan to offer, which is poorly described in the media, but supposedly is another way to get birth control from their insurance without the direct involvement of the employers.
The plan sounds like gibberish, and is not expected to satisfy those who object to being forced to pay for these services for their employees. The most useful information is that the White House is worried that it has lost considerable voter support because of the birth control edict.
Obama’s Blow to Reproductive Justice – NextGen Journal.
Read it…… because she wants us to trust the FDA, even though it doesn’t do what she says it does. She wants the little girls who aren’t allowed to get their ears pierced without mommy signing, and who are not allowed to carry ibuprofen or naproxen to school for alleviating their first menstrual cramps, to be able to buy the morning after pill with their lunch money.
A comment had been appended to the article, but since it might not last there, here’s a portion of it:
“Should we not be protecting our children from those who think it’s OK for 11 year olds to have sex, and buy a drug entity which is 60 percent effective per use, associated with virilization of female fetuses, increased susceptibility to STDs, and osteoporosis, and is not studied in the pre-teen population?” .
“We should not be placing faith in the FDA, which has mishandled the HUGE shortages of medically vital drugs and chemotherapeutic agents. Lives have been lost and countless more are at risk because the drug supplies have become so unpredictable that rational adaptations and substitutions cannot be made in a timely manner. Our government has been exacerbating this problem while it diddles with the desires of people who want sexual access to the pediatric population.”
Illinois Pharmacy Owners have emerged victorious after six years of litigation against the state of Illinois edict compelling them to dispense the morning after pill.
This comes shortly after the approval of a new morning after pill, Ella, which is an analog of RU486, mifepristone.
Francis J Manion of the ACLJ, and Mark Rienzi, of Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law teamed up as counsel to the pharmacy owners.
Deposed Governor Blagojevich’s original order addressing individual pharmacists had previously been overturned.
Judge Belz noted that the government had made no effort to advance it’s supposed interest in supplying morning after pills to women prior to April 2010, and had specifically targeted pharmacists of conscience and their religious beliefs.
Pharmacists for Life International has stored the original letter from Blagojevich which threatened pharmacists with loss of their license to practice if they did not dispense the morning after pill and all other hormonal birth control products and contraceptives upon demand.
The coverage in the Chicago Tribune is very brief, does not mention the newest morning after pill, and does not mention that the original order to the pharmacists was for them to dispense all drugs labeled as “contraceptives” though most are misbranded. It does mention an expected (hoped for) appeal to the case.
Kevin Storman owned a number of Thriftway stores in the Olympia area of Washington State. He decided to back his pharmacists decision (at Ralph’s Thriftway) to avoid stocking and dispensing the Plan B morning after pill.
This sent governor Christine Gregoire into a foaming frenzy of involving herself in a boycott of the stores, and threatening to fire members of the Washington Board of Pharmacy if they backed the freedom of pharmacists to conscientiously object to dispensing this abortive drug.
In 2009, a federal judge decided in favor of the store owners and pharmacists but that ruling was struck down on appeal and the case was remanded back to the district court.
Recently a request for summary judgment, from the Governor, was turned down, and trial was scheduled to resume in Federal District Court in Tacoma, Washington.
This past Wednesday, July 7, the Board’s lawyers signaled that there would be regulations enacted to protect pharmacists who would not dispense this drug, providing that they would refer the patient elsewhere.
Curiosity has arisen as to the reason behind a Gregoire Administration reversal of policy regarding the pharmacists.
Gregoire, being crazy-pro-abortion enough, was on the Obama Short List for Souter’s position on the U.S. Supreme court, but this position eventually went to Sotomayor.
Elena Kagan is the likely leftist body to fill the open position on the Supreme Court left by liberal Justice John Stevens. Gregoire is on the list to possibly occupy the solicitor general vacancy left by Kagan should she be confirmed.
From the Becket Fund: http://www.becketfund.org/files/final%20response%20to%20msj.pdf
Woman uses emergency contraceptive to kill wrongly implanted babies by Jill Stanek.
For those of you who are confused about the mechanism of the morning after pill, this drug was used to kill embryos which were mistakenly placed into the wrong woman. Obviously it was the wrong woman…….. since she decided to kill them.
The error at a University of Connecticut fertility clinic, in which embryos belonging to one woman were placed in the wrong patient, was discovered within an hour, and the patient decided to take the morning after pill to stop the pregnancy.
Read the original NBC story on this 2009 error, apparently “erased” by the only morning after pill on the market at that time: Plan B.
Next time you are told the lie, that the morning after pill works only by stopping/delaying ovulation, please remember that NBC informed you otherwise. OOPS!!!
New ‘morning-after’ pill, ella, raises debate over similarity to abortion drug.
Check it out before it gets archived.
While on the topic of conscientiously objecting health care professionals…… MUSLIMS ARE ABOARD . They’ve been getting their way in the UK, and will provide Obama with much cognitive dissonance.
NPR demonstrates why its listenership is really low and it needs public support to survive.
New ‘Morning After’ Pill Works Five Days Later, Too : NPR.
“Paul Fine would like to stop seeing emergency contraceptives referred to as “morning after pills”, the story opens.
Well, those interested in accuracy and honesty continue to use that term, since calling it “contraception” is misbranding.
All of the morning after pills can operate by interceptive (post fertilization) mechanisms to stop the life of an early human embryo.
Not withstanding the similar words from Dr. Donna Harrison, a representative of the ob-gyn physicians who DON’T make money by prescribing these morning after pills, NPR plods on with the latest apologetics.
The interceptive mechanisms are explained away by stating that the pills sometimes don’t work and claiming that the failures are post ovulatory. It is fact that both Plan B and EllaOne have extremely high failure rate, but this is not adequate evidence against the action of interceptive mechanisms, the likelihood of which the manufacturer admits in the CHMP Assessment Report.
In fact, the interceptive mechanism of EllaOne, a drug closely related to mifepristone (RU-486) is much more obvious. Efficacy of the drug in stopping pregnancy stays the same, (or perhaps even rises) when used during the entire recommended 5 day period after intercourse.
The morning after pill dose is about 0.5mg/kg in an average size woman. This is considerably LOWER than the dose required to stop ovulation (seen in animal studies). This latter dose is closer to the embryocidal, or fetocidal dose.
Think of it this way:
ulipristal acetate 30mg EllaOne morning after pill ———-> ulipristal acetate 120mg higher dose needed to stop ovulation——–>ulipristal acetate 300mg higher dose to kill more developed embryos and fetuses.
Therefore, doses of EllaOne can be accumulated for home abortions, and one can be certain that this will happen when this morning after pill is placed over the counter.
It will become another tool in the armory of planned parenthood along-side the tele-abortions offered (in Iowa) using mifepristone and misoprostil.
Below are tidbits from the CHMP Assessment Report, (European Medicines Agency Evaluation of Medicines for Human Use)
which is linked here, and on the sidebar of this blog.
1) “Ulipristal acetate (17α-Acetoxy-11β-(4-N,N-dimethylaminophenyl)-19-norpregna-4,9-diene-3,20-dione, also known as CDB-2914, VA2914, HRP-2000 and RTI-3021-012) is a compound that is derived from 19-norprogesterone. It is a synthetic selective progesterone receptor modulator with antagonistic and partial agonistic effects at the progesterone receptor. It binds the human progesterone, but not the estrogen receptor3. Ulipristal acetate prevents progesterone from occupying its receptor, thus the gene transcription normally turned on by progesterone is blocked, and the proteins necessary to begin and maintain pregnancy are not synthesized.”
2) “In vitro, Ulipristal acetate binds competitively to the progesterone, glucocorticoid and androgen receptors, but has minimal affinity for the estrogen or mineralocorticoid receptors. Pre-clinical studies indicate that ulipristal acetate binds to the human progesterone, glucocorticoid and androgen receptors at approximately 6, 1.5 and 0.2 times the affinity of the endogenous ligands. The compound has antiprogestational activity in rats, rabbits and monkeys, with additional antiglucocorticoid and antiandrogen activity at doses ∼50 times higher than those needed for antiprogestational activity. Since progesterone is critical for implantation, it was thought that ulipristal acetate may have promise as a contraceptive agent.” **
3)”The ability of ulipristal acetate to terminate pregnancies was investigated in the guinea-pig and monkey. Ulipristal, mifepristone and lilopristone were approximately equipotent at the dose levels of 10 and 30 mg/day in terminating pregnancies in guinea-pigs when the animals were treated on days 43 and 44 of gestation. Pregnant long-tailed macaques (5/group) were administered ulipristal acetate 0.5 or 5 mg/kg/day p.o. or 0.5 mg/kg/day i.m. on days 23-26 of gestation. Pregnant animals were assessed by ultrasound pretreatment (day 23) and then monitored on days 26-28, 30, 32, 35, 55, 80, 100, 130 and 145. At 0.5 mg/kg of ulipristal acetate there was no loss of foetuses, while at 5 mg/kg 2/5 foetuses were lost. When using intramuscular administration of 0.5 mg/kg 4/5 foetuses were lost in ulipristal acetate treated animals. In monkeys in which pregnancy continued and which were allowed to deliver normally, there was no evidence of structural or physiological abnormalities in foetuses.”
** note misuse of the word “contraceptive” for interceptive mechanism in tidbit number 2.
New 5-Day ‘Morning-After’ Pill Tested For U.S. Approval.
Two useful bits of information in the above article, from a tech news site (Physorg).
1) EllaOne, the new morning after pill from Europe is being tested for approval in the United States.
2) It’s efficacy in killing the early human embryo does not decrease over the 5 day period after sex, in which it is recommended for use.
Some of the Physorg commentators had sufficient education to recognize that the mechanism of EllaOne involves causing death of the early human embryo. Hat’s off to them.
Some of the comments appended to the article are from those who were unable to part from a religious notion that they could distinguish which humans had been ensouled by developmental stage. These might be drained from the human gene pool over time, by means of EllaOne, perhaps, despite Pharmer’s recommendations to the contrary.
As a progesterone receptor modulator with low glucocorticoid activity, ulipristal gained attractiveness as a birth control drug primarily due to its ability to cause endometrial atrophy. That means, from a birth control standpoint : no place for the human embryo to implant.
*** ulipristal ellaone ella-one ella one sprm
If there had been an internet back in the 30s and 40s Hitler would have crashed and burned long before millions were killed.
A decade and a half ago, without much knowledge at all, Pharmer started plugging a health care ethics issue online, on other people’s message boards, until it became news internationally. This Process took about two and a half years.
Now what happens on the internet itself is the news, the real news media exists there, and any politician or media mogul can be heard passing gas on the other side of the world in seconds or hours.
Before most people knew how cool O’Keefe is (04-03-2008 to be exact), Pharmer linked and blogged his Planned Parenthood videos- because he stung them for accepting donations earmarked to abort Black babies.
Down on the Pharm, We knew O’Keefe’s compatriots were NOT bugging Landrieu’s phones when that bogus conjecture came out.
Way to go, Andrew Breitbart. It was so much fun to watch that liar Blumenthal get spanked.
More ineffective birth control is being marketed to women in Europe. This new morning after pill, Ella One, containing ulipristal 30mg, is said to be useful for up to 120 hours (5 days) AFTER intercourse.
The study (1241 women) mentioned in this article indicates that ulipristal reduces the pregnancy rate from the expected 5.5 percent down to 2.1 percent.
In this study, the women who used the pill later after intercourse had lower pregnancy rates than the earlier users, though the differences among the groups were not statistically significant. If a larger study were to replicate this trend within statistical significance it would add more evidence for the pill’s post fertilization effects. Those who understand the reproductive processes find it intuitively obvious that pills reducing pregnancy rate AFTER intercourse work to a significant degree by killing the embryo shortly after it is formed.
That ethical problem aside, women should be aware that a pill reducing the pregnancy rate from 5.5 percent to 2.1 percent should not be considered reliable.
The data here indicates that it fails to stop nearly 40 percent of the pregnancies, under study conditions with more education and oversight than usual circumstances.
*** ulipristal ellaone ella-one ella one sprm ella 1 ella1
Well, rehabilitate the withdrawal method of course! So check out this ABC article which cites studies to “show” that the withdrawal method is on par with condom use for efficacy in preventing pregnancy.
Obviously it won’t help with other common problems…….
So with withdrawal rehabilitated to acceptability as a contraceptive method, then Plan B might still be thought of as “effective”.
Or maybe getting both of these into common usage will sell a lot more abortions.
This goes into the PHARMER TOLD YA SO FILE…. since conscience rights for health professionals has been my business for years and years.
The leftists do not have room for health care professionals who regard all human life with respect and who would not kill in their practice. In the event of Obamacare, most of us will be compelled to change careers, which will leave patients to deal with the other kind of health care provider.
Martha Coakley weighs in on the topic here.
The Morning After Pill:
A Grand Deception
Peggy Pace, BS Pharm., R.Ph.
Wouldn’t it be grand if we could reduce elective surgical abortions with a pill? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if pro-choice and pro-life advocates found something they could agree on? That’s the promise of the so-called morning after pill: taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, it is said to virtually guarantee there will be no “accidental” pregnancy, no need to purposefully harm the weakest among us by aborting them. Can’t we all agree that this would create a kinder, gentler place to be an embryo, the smallest human being? Here’s a goal we can all support. Pass out the pills!
Such is the rallying cry of those in the pro-choice camp. “Finally,” they say, “we have a solution, and if the pro-lifers don’t endorse it, we will expose them as the hate-mongers we know them to be. Make these pills readily available and the need for abortion will plummet.” Right?
But are these arguments valid? If they are, why would anyone object? Let’s look at the real experience with the morning after pill. In fact, increased access to the morning after pill (taken after unprotected sex) has not lowered unplanned pregnancy rates. The demand for surgical abortions has not dropped as promised. But sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) have increased. But don’t take my word for it; let’s look at the hard facts.
Where the effects of supplying women with the morning after pill have been studied, no decrease in surgical abortion rates has been found. While availability of the pill may have prevented some pregnancies in some women some of the time, the reported effectiveness rate of 90% has not been demonstrated in real use, and the morning after pill has not been the public health breakthrough that it was touted to be. Of more concern, it appears that women may engage in riskier behavior when they think they have a pill to cancel that activity, and STDs have increased where the morning after pill has been made available to women, even in advance of need. That’s bad news for everyone.
But there is something else even more troubling about the morning after pill. This is a concoction of a very high dose of progestin. The manufacturer says that the pill works by preventing ovulation and/or fertilization. But if progestin-only pills only prevent ovulation about half of the time in the women who take it every day, how could a one-time use reliably inhibit ovulation? Another reported mechanism is that this high dose progestin “slows down” sperm, or makes the environment along the woman’s reproductive tract inhospitable to traveling sperm. Hmmm….experts tell us that sperm can arrive at the site of fertilization (the ovary end of the fallopian tube) in as little as 20 minutes following intercourse. How can a pill taken 72 hours later possibly have an effect in this manner?
No, the really troubling effect of the morning after pill is how it works after fertilization has already taken place. You see, at union of sperm and egg, a new human life is present. It is genetically unique, and it begins directing its own development immediately. It will be another week, however, before it makes its way to the uterus or womb, and begins to implant itself there where it will grow until birth. The morning after pill destroys the ability of the uterus to receive and nurture this new person, so the embryo dies from lack of nourishment and is sloughed off. Thus, the morning after pill, rather than decrease abortion, actually causes a very early chemical abortion.
How can the pill manufacturers get away with saying the pill does not cause abortion? By a redefinition of words. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG, changed the definition of pregnancy over 30 years ago when they realized that normal birth control pills may have the effect of causing early abortions. Sound ethical practice requires that a woman be told of this effect, but doctors did not want to have to tell their patients this. So they redefined pregnancy. Most of us understand that new life, pregnancy, begins with the union of sperm and egg. This is high school biology. But ACOG says that a woman is not pregnant until the embryo has completely implanted in the wall of the uterus. This occurs when the new person is about 1 week old. Even the manufacturer admits to this effect, but it is shrouded in medical terminology, buried in the package insert. So what sounds like an arcane discussion of medical terms actually is a way to keep women from knowing the truth about medications they are being encouraged to take.
But the strangest part of this whole story is that crisis pregnancy centers (CPC’s) would tell these same lies to their clients who visit their websites. Surely CPC’s know the truth about this drug; what possible reason would they have for keeping it from women looking to them for truthful answers? For example, a CPC in our area (southern Illinois) recently renamed “Mosaic”( http://revealmosaic.publishpath.com/morning-after-pill ) repeats verbatim the claim that the morning after pill is not effective if a woman is already pregnant. This is true only if you ignore the growing embryo’s presence for the first week of his or her life. A bad thing for a CPC to ignore, don’t you think? A visitor to this site who is persistent in her search will eventually encounter the truth that the morning after pill causes an early chemical abortion. Will a young frightened woman find it, and what means does she have to know which statement is true? Why would a CPC “bury” this life-changing truth deep in their website?
So now we women have yet another hazard to try to avoid in the game of “Whack-A- Mole” currently being played against our lives and the lives of our children. We have:
-fathers who abandon us;
-boyfriends who don’t love us;
-value only to the extent that we can provide pleasure;
-education systems that teach us to ignore our basic physical differences from men;
-economic situations requiring us to abandon our children to the care of strangers;
-sexual abuse, with many ways it can be legally covered up by perpetrators.
But wait, there’s more- now we can add to this list:
-medical and scientific communities who lie to us.
Even those who tell us they are here to help us regard all the “options” that women have to deal with unplanned pregnancies as equally valid. In other words, they pretend that as long as you consider carefully whether or not to choose life for your baby, your decision will be correct. As long as you agonize over your decision, the argument goes, you’ll arrive at the right one. There is nothing telling a woman in dire straights that she should choose life, that she will be glad she did, and all sorts of abortion education is made available at these sites. This is interesting, because most CPC’s say they exist to help women overcome the difficulties they encounter when they choose life for their babies. They normally are not founded to help women weigh the pro’s and con’s of abortion, but to urge women to make the choice that they already know is the correct choice, that is, to let their innocent babies live.
Next time you read that we can decrease abortion by increasing abortion, tell them it doesn’t add up, and that YOU know better.
References:
Advanced Provision of Emergency Contraception does Not Reduce Abortion Rates (C,4/04) Contraception Volume 69, Issue 5 , May 2004, Pages 361-366 Anna Glasier , a, b, Karen Fairhurstc, Sally Wykec, Sue Zieblandd, Peter Seamanc, Jeremy Walkerc and Fatim Lakhaa
Graham Grant, “Birth Control For Teens So Pregnancies Go Up By 10pc,” Daily Mail (London), December 1, 2003, ED_Sci, p. 10.
Walter Larimore, M.D., Joseph Stanford, M.D., “Postfertilization Effects of Oral Contraceptives and Their Relationship to Informed Consent,” Archives of Family Medicine, Vol. 9, No. 2, (February 2000).
C Kahlenborn, JB Stanford, and WL Larimore. Postfertilization effect of hormonal emergency contraception. The Annals of Pharmacotherapy: Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 465-470.
Manufacturer’s Prescribing Information for Plan B (Levonorgestrel) tablets, 0.75 mg. Mfg. by Gedeon Richter, Ltd., Budapest, Hungary for Duramed Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Subsidiary of Barr Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Pomona, NY 10970. Revised Feb 2004.
( Plan B, Levonelle, emergency contraception, single dose, morning after pill, MAP, levonorgestrel, Plan B One-Step )
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Master the art of finger-wagging for use in discourse with our ideological opponents.
Practice...practice...practice!
